But it turned out she would not be let alone. We dine in the public
room, but she had her meals sent up to her and we flattered ourselves
(or I did) that her net had been laid in vain. Folk dine late in the
tropics, and we dallied over coffee and cigars, so that it was going on
for ten o'clock when Yerkes and I started upstairs again. Monty and
Fred went out to see the waterfront by moonlight.

We had reached our door (he and I shared one great room) when we heard
terrific screams from the floor above--a woman's--one after another,
piercing, fearful, hair-raising, and so suggestive in that gloomy, grim
building that a man's very blood stood still.

Yerkes was the first upstairs. He went like an arrow from a bow, and I
after him. The screams had stopped before we reached the stairhead,
but there was no doubting which her room was; the door was partly
open, permitting a view of armchairs and feminine garments in some
disorder. We heard a man talking loud quick Arabic, and a
woman--pleading, I thought. Yerkes rapped on the door.

"Come in!" said a voice, and I followed Yerkes in.

We were met by her Syrian maid, a creature with gazelle eyes and timid
manner, who came through the doorway leading to an inner room.

"What's the trouble?" demanded Yerkes, and the woman signed to us to go
on in. Yerkes led the way again impulsively as any knight-errant
rescuing beleaguered dames, but I looked back and saw that the Syrian
woman had locked the outer door. Before I could tell Will that, he was
in the next room, so I followed, and, like him, stood rather bewildered.